Strengths:
Through direction from Owen Jones and his hard-charging American management style, L’Oreal has gone through a transformation from a European based cosmetics company to a world leader in the cosmetics industry. L’Oreal’s particular skill is to buy local cosmetics brands, give them a facelift, and export them around to world. Their good brand management is about hitting the right audience with the right product, through a very carefully crafted portfolio. Each brand is precisely positioned to fill a certain market or product niche.
The L'Oreal name will always be linked to Parisian sophistication, but now the more modern L'Oreal is only French when it wants to be, and the company is eager to represent all nationalities. L'Oreal is aware that in the global market you have to be diverse and flexible, especially in ad campaigns, a danger for many cosmetic companies in the global market is to try to "impose one type of Western beauty on the world," says Owen Jones. This attitude is reflected in many of L'Oreal's advertisements. L'Oreal has made concentrated efforts to create new markets through their Soft-Sheen/Carson African hair-care line. They have made a strategic alliance with the Japanese Shu Uemura in an attempt to gain a foothold in the rapidly expanding Asian market.
Another of L'Oreal's greatest strengths is that they are a "scientific" beauty company, spending 3% of their revenue on research, compared to the industry standard of less than 2%. They are always looking for niche markets, as shown by their opening of a research laboratory in Chicago to study the properties of African hair. They are quite aware in today's economy that with even small technological improvements you have to get it out there to sell it, and the easiest way to own a market is to be the only source for a new product.
Weaknesses:
Thanks to L'Oreal's global expansion, even if business is down in one area, they can still expect revenue from another. Right now the company's biggest weakness is the forthcoming retirement of CEO Owen Jones in 2006: many investors see Owen Jones as "central to L'Oreal's current valuation," says Sandhya Raju, a cosmetics industry analyst at Merrill Lynch in London.
L'Oreal has had some trouble expanding into the Japanese market; in an attempt to find products more slanted to the Asian psyche they have bought a 35% interest in Shu Uemura. They are considering a friendly takeover in the near future.
Mazal Group was founded in 2007, in Chatsworth, California. They have six main brands and two brands being developed. With their emphasis on cosmetics, they have shown excessive growth in the last few years, opening an average of eight new stores and ten kiosks each year. They have eighty-four employees in their headquarters, up from the initial eight that started in 2007. In 2013, the cosmetics industry in the United States earned revenues of $56.63 billion, with facial skin care representing 27% of the industry (Exhibit 1). CEO, Adi Oded, says, “The cosmetics industry, especially in skincare, is booming. We have all these baby boomers getting older and looking for anti-aging solutions and we are giving them those solutions” (personal communication, June 27, 2014). The cosmetic industry is constantly developing and this in-depth analysis will provide the explanation of why Mazal Group has had so much success in recent years.
Customers are not only buying the product because they need it, they buy it because they trust it. That credibility is connected to the emotional impact of the commercial. The details of the propaganda are designed to produce a sensation of freshness, cleanness, and energy. With the emotional connection that it creates they make people want to buy it because they want to feel pretty, comfortable and fresh. The logical sound of the commercial and product’s effectiveness gives the final touch to persuade the viewers. Given these points, we can conclude that the magic behind the success of Neutrogena Wave Sonic is the correct use of ethos pathos and
Based on the case, Lawson Cosmetics has an unresolved issue. They cannot decide on whether they should take the new branding initiative global, which is brought up by Gupta. Lawson is obviously a multinational company. In my opinion, they should develop major elements to market locally, and regionally and globally at the same time with a consistent brand image, but they need to adapt its brand to different markets by different ways carefully.
...he oldest companies producing skin care and pharmaceutical products, it has a high level of customer care in order to create high value from their products and high customer satisfaction.
United Kingdom. Gotham. Advertising Standards Authority. ASA Adjudication on L'Oreal (UK) Ltd - Advertising Standards Authority. July 27, 2011. Accessed November 18, 2013. http://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2011/7/LOreal-(UK)-Ltd/SHP_ADJ_149632.aspx.
As you read further you will see why MAC is such a unique entity in this well established industry. Every aspect of what makes MAC Cosmetics; "MAC" being its products, its location, its brand image, or its phenomenal price point is unique and goes against most typical marketing methods. As we all know product, price, promotion and place are the four fundamental variables that either make or break a company. MAC is currently the only Estee Lauder brand that is not only meeting; but exceeding its annual sales goals. Last year MAC surpassed its sales plan by 121 million dollars! Which is unheard of in this industry.
Based on the information provided in the L’Oreal case, Yue Sai struggled to grow and capture additional sales in the high-end Chinese cosmetics sector. In the past, L’Oreal attempted to position Yue Sai in several different ways which can be viewed as detrimental to the company image, showing uncertainty as the company struggles to see which positioning strategy will stick. The most recent positioning presented in the case, which desires to “deliver Yue Sai’s longstanding brand promise that ‘Nobody knows Chinese skin better than Yue Sai’”, allows the highest probability of success for the company capitalizing on countless fresh trends in Chinese cosmetics (6). The positioning statement would reflect this new strategy: “For the modern Chinese woman Yue Sai offers a line of high-end cosmetics. Unlike other high-end cosmetics Yue Sai combines traditional Chinese medicine and sophisticated technology adapted to the unique skin type of Chinese women.” Yue Sai saw reasonable success and hope in the new Vital Essential line which utilized traditional Chinese medicine and, therefore, resulted in above average repeat purchases. Continuing to focus the strategy around traditional Chinese medicine should benefit Yue Sai considerably. Another suggested strategy would be to wholly reposition Yue Sai, however this is ill advised. As stated in the case, Yue Sai tried numerous different positioning strategies, which ultimately provided no clear path strategy. Repositioning would show uncertainty in the company, lowering brand value in the eyes of the consumer.
MAC (Makeup Art Cosmetics) is originally a Canadian company that has been operating for more than 20 years and it has already penetrate to many countries all around the world, in the North and South America at most. It sells brand cosmetics of high quality that is intended for professional as well as everyday usage. The brand is sought-after also by many celebrities, fashion models, and photographers because of its delicate texture, huge choice of colors, and durability. The products are usually very well tolerated on every skin type and MAC make-up items are also suitable for women with sensitive eyes (MAC, 2007, p. 1). The prices of the MAC cosmetics are comparable with other high quality world brands, i.e. those which cannot be bought in drugstores, but in the specialized cosmetic stores or international perfumeries that the company has a contract with. That hinders the company from further expansion into other countries, mainly in Central and Eastern Europe, because of the limited ways of sale.
L’Oreal is the largest beauty company in the world and in the past 100 years that it has expanded, it has supplied to 130 countries with offices in 58 different countries. This global company is the number one premium cosmetic product in the world today and has taken the core and beauty of people’s everyday lives since 1907, the beginning of L’Oreal. The superior leadership of a guy named Eugene Schueller started this strategic company with basic products such as hair care and also the first man-made hair color product. Five years later you could find these products in Austria, Italy, and the Netherlands. In 1934 Eugene invented the first mass market of soap less shampoo and this led the success of L’Oreal in the country of Europe which soon recognized them as the leader in body care and hair coloring products. Finally soon after World War II L’Oreal moved into the United States and the company seemed to change. When L’Oreal expanded the competition was more involved and more growth was needed in order for the company to be more successful. With problems like this, the strategy and planning that has been applied in L’Oreal has been huge for the success of the company. L’Oreal realized they needed to expand in other fields of the beauty market and target markets in order to stay alive and successful. This would mean that L’Oreal would need to acquire other companies as part of their expansion and through this they have kept the constancy of the leading company with acquisitions of many small companies. Finally in the 1980s they started their globalization into new markets all around the globe by acquiring new companies that would form the cosmetics that we know today. Although the role of acquisitions has never been the main focus of the company, internal growth and strategy was the number one reason for L’Oreal becoming such a big name. The main strategy was to adopt new companies and expand it from within believing that the brand could be taken globally and benefit their overall brand portfolio. The main role of acquisitions was to increase and lengthen the internal growth rate. L’Oreal started acquiring companies from the beginning of their name. They started with the basics of their own brands such as L’Oreal Professional, L’Oreal Paris, Kerastase, and Club des Createurs de Beaute.
competitors include Mary Kay Inc., and Revlon, Inc. The company’s top foreign direct selling companies of beauty products are L’Oréal (France) and Infinitus (China). AVON sold their North American division, as 90% of sales come from non-U.S. markets. These companies are the top competitors for AVON, due to the similar product base within the cosmetic environment, price points, and target market audience (Wood, 2013). AVON has lost domestic market shares to Revlon, who has increased their marketing campaign against the company. AVON has a challenging foreign market to infiltrate between rivals in respected countries such as L’Oréal and Infinitus. The threat of substitutes is highly competitive within foreign markets in an already competitive industry to
• A Nike ad in Soccer America magazine that delivered the massage to Europe, Asia and Latin America. Part of its message mentioned to their local investors to better invest in some deodorant.
Tanner and Raymond (2014) describe branding activity as “strategies that are designed to create an image and position in the consumers’ minds” (c.6). When branding messages coincide with its offerings’ characteristics, it establishes consumer trust, and brand strength. For example, when first introducing Dove brand in 1957, by labeling its product as a “beauty cleansing bar . . . [with] ¼ moisturizing cream, that rinses cleaner than soap” (Unilever, 2016), we can see that marketers associated the brand to moisturizing and beauty, and disassociated the brand from common soap. Over the years, this consistent message coinciding with product performance has strengthened the Dove brand. Strong brand equity is derived from consistent, strategic branding that establishes perceived quality and emotional attachment (Entrepreneur, 2016); therefore, consumers are more likely to pay higher prices, as well as purchase new offerings connected to the
Unilever’s Dove is part of the consumer goods company’s many brands which have historically lacked global identity amongst its many products. The lack of global identity resulted in issues such as diverse marketing standards, varied product development, and lack of brand recognition by consumers worldwide. Unilever’s solution to this problem was to group similar product lines under a few recognizable umbrella corporations. This initiative gave birth to the one of the most controversial marketing strategies in the history of business.
The shifting of the consumer’s taste of simple products to high quality branded products is not sudden. It grew out in the middle of the 20th century and the companies selling various products needed a new way to differentiate their products from the others giving it a unique identity.
Unilever has more than 400 brands, 14 of which create sales in additional of 1 billion pounds a year. Almost all those brands have time-honored, strong collective operations, which includes Lifebuoy’s drive to promote hygiene through hand washing with soap, and Dove’s crusade for existent beauty. (Unilever, 2014)